Democratic Republic of Congo is still regularly listed as the site of one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Congo should be rich from its gold, diamonds and minerals, yet millions of its people suffer from a lethal combination of disease and hunger caused by ongoing conflict and displacement.

The war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is formally over, but women and girls remain targets for violence. The actual number of women and girls raped in eastern Congo is unknown, but experts say the scale is enormous (hundreds of thousands have been reported).

The conflict in eastern Congo, the deadliest in the world since World War II, is being fueled by a multi-million dollar trade in minerals that go into our electronic products from cell phones to digital cameras. The armed groups that are perpetrating the violence generate an estimated $144 million each year by trading tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold.

Children are particularly vulnerable during conflict – and nowhere in the world is this more true than in the Democratic Republic of Congo. One of the most devastating issues in this conflict is the frequent and ongoing abduction of children – some as young as nine – into armed groups.